Praise for
SWORD Of THE GODS
“Cordell does it all while telling a legend that hits all the high notes of heroic fantasy. Strange, enigmatic hero? Check. Noble companions by his side? Check. A diabolical villain from the nether reaches of another universe? Check. Lots of action? Check. Surprises to be discovered? Check. Worth reading? Definitely.”
—Grasping for the Wind
“As a character, Demascus is full of mystery, excellent personality, approachable, naïve enough, vulnerable, strong beyond his own knowledge and very, very likeable.
His ability to relate and care for those around him, even if they’re insignificant compared with the stature of his persona and the importance of his mission, makes him a good heroic character that is credible. At the same time, it leaves you wanting to see him uncovering his full potential to find out what he’s truly capable of. Although a small taste of his power is given at the start of the book, it’s been so well crafted that it truly leaves you wanting to see more of the same. Time and time again!”
—Games Magazine
ALSO BY BRUCE R. CORDELL
ABOLETHIC SOVEREIGNTY
Book I
Plague of Spells
Book II
City of Torment
Book III
Key of Stars
THE PRIESTS
Lady of Poison
THE WIZARDS
Darkvision
THE DUNGEONS
Stardeep
Sword of the Gods
SWORD OF THE GODS:
SPINNER OF LIES
©2011 Wizards of the Coast LLC
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Hasbro SA, represented by Hasbro Europe, Stockley Park, UB11 1AZ. UK.
Forgotten Realms, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Wizards of the Coast, their respective logos, Gamma World, Dark Sun, Prince of Undeath, Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead, and Dragon are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries.
All Wizards of the Coast characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Cover art by: Lucas Graciano
First Edition: April 2012
“Necropolis of the Sword” originally published in Dungeon #191 ©2011 Wizards.
“Explore Airspur: Brightest of the Fallen Stars” originally published in Dragon #377 ©2009 Wizards. “Explore Airspur: Agents and Enemies” originally published in Dragon #378 ©2009 Wizards. “Explore Airspur: Villains and Vagabonds” originally published in Dungeon #172 ©2009 Wizards.
eISBN: 978-0-7869-5995-2
640-38956000-001-EN
For customer service, contact:
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For CC
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Epilogue
Dramatis Personae
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Author’s Note
Backdrop
Explore Airspur
Welcome to Faerûn, a land of magic and intrigue, brutal violence and divine compassion, where gods have ascended and died, and mighty heroes have risen to fight terrifying monsters. Here, millennia of warfare and conquest have shaped dozens of unique cultures, raised and leveled shining kingdoms and tyrannical empires alike, and left long forgotten, horror-infested ruins in their wake.
A LAND OF MAGIC
When the goddess of magic was murdered, a magical plague of blue fire—the Spellplague—swept across the face of Faerûn, killing some, mutilating many, and imbuing a rare few with amazing supernatural abilities. The Spellplague forever changed the nature of magic itself, and seeded the land with hidden wonders and bloodcurdling monstrosities.
A LAND OF DARKNESS
The threats Faerûn faces are legion. Armies of undead mass in Thay under the brilliant but mad lich king Szass Tam. Treacherous dark elves plot in the Underdark in the service of their cruel and fickle goddess, Lolth. The Abolethic Sovereignty, a terrifying hive of inhuman slave masters, floats above the Sea of Fallen Stars, spreading chaos and destruction. And the Empire of Netheril, armed with magic of unimaginable power, prowls Faerûn in flying fortresses, sowing discord to their own incalculable ends.
A LAND OF HEROES
But Faerûn is not without hope. Heroes have emerged to fight the growing tide of darkness. Battle-scarred rangers bring their notched blades to bear against marauding hordes of orcs. Lowly street rats match wits with demons for the fate of cities. Inscrutable tiefling warlocks unite with fierce elf warriors to rain fire and steel upon monstrous enemies. And valiant servants of merciful gods forever struggle against the darkness.
A LAND OF
UNTOLD ADVENTURE
THE CITY OF AIRSPUR, AKANÛL
16 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
oNE RAINY EVENING, WHILE DEMASCUS WAS PLAYING A game of tiles on his rooftop balcony, the memory of killing his lover returned. He was studying a game board that spelled out improbable actions, fiery emotions, and especially dubious curse words. The latter were courtesy of his absent opponent. He nodded thoughtfully, then laid down several square playing pieces, each carved with a single letter, to spell the word conspire across a space marked with crossed wands. That multiplied the value of his play by two … and he realized he’d just catapulted into the lead! When Riltana sees this, he thought, she’s going to curse me out as a rat-hearted cheater. He grinned.
Riltana had a flare for laying down high-scoring words, probably thanks to the windsoul’s colorful vocabulary. He’d discovered her talent a few months ago when she’d decisively beat him at a game that she said he “might find interesting.” Since then, they’d set up each game on the roof. It was convenient for Riltana; she could drop in and make her play whether he was home or not.
Demascus was fascinated by tiles, despite the fact that Riltana trounced him five times out of six. It wasn’t only th
at he enjoyed a challenge and anticipated the day his skill would rival his friend’s. No, the real reason he couldn’t get enough was because sometimes the words on the board unlocked splinters of memory.
For instance, CONSPIRE. That was a word to conjure with. The two syllables suggested a wanton trespass, a meeting high above an unsuspecting—
A gust of wind sprayed cold rain in his face. His chain of thought collapsed. “Shadow take it,” he muttered. He rubbed water out of his eyes. And just like that, the world went gray, as a recollection flung him somewhere else.
A woman stood in a hallway, her features soft in trembling candlelight. Her shoulders were bare and her eyes smoldered like distant storm clouds. Her name was Madri, and Demascus loved her.
He stood a few paces from her, and he wore only loose trousers, baring his elaborate ash-gray designs. The marks ran down his arms and across his back like the ghosts of tattoos. His bone-white hair was wet and his pale skin tingled from the bath.
“Coming to bed?” she asked, winding a curl of hair around one finger in languid circles.
His blood surged higher. It pounded in his temples like a drum. I can’t go through with this, he thought. I can’t …
“What’s wrong? You’ve been quiet all night. It’s not like you, Demascus.” Madri’s impish expression wavered.
“I took a new commission,” he said, his voice dull as a worn blade. “One I wish for all my lives I hadn’t accepted. If only I’d known who …”
“You accept commissions without knowing the target?”
“Sometimes.” Because whomever the gods choose always deserved death. And when had he ever refused? Never. Even …
Oh, Madri! What secrets do you keep? How awful they must be.
“You’re not frightened, surely,” she said, misreading his reticence. “If I’m to believe a quarter of your stories, even demigods fear your name, if they’re unlucky enough to learn it.” She laughed and came to him. Her scent, a sort of orange-peach fragrance with undertones of cedar, was solace. He breathed it in for the last time. Then he took her supple shoulders in his hands.
“It’s not that I’m afraid, Madri. I’m paralyzed by … grief. And I regret that it’s come to this.” Her arms went around his waist to draw him close. He slid his hands up from her shoulders, tracing the line of her neck until he cupped her head. “I’m sorry,” he said. Even as she gazed at him with incomprehension, he gave a savage twist.
Pelting rain brought Demascus back to the rooftop patio. Water streamed down his hair, under his collar, and saturated his smallclothes. He was standing beyond the protection of the awning with no memory of having moved. And his throat was sore, as if he’d been screaming. The city lights were nebulous beneath the sleeting downpour, and the wind tugged at him with icy fingers. A few more steps and he’d pitch over the roof’s edge. From somewhere below, a wailing child cried for its mother.
“Burning dominions,” he whispered. What in the name of all the gods of shadow had he just witnessed? That woman—Madri—he’d seen her before. Images only, flashes of memory with no context. In each of these, she’d glared at him with naked animosity. Now he knew why.
One of his former incarnations had been snakehearted enough to kill his own lover. By all that’s holy and sovereign, he thought, I’m a monster. I …
No, no—I’m not—thatwasn’t me! That was an earlier incarnation of me, not me. I’d never do that. He shook his head in accompaniment with his denial. The atrocity of the recollection was not his to claim. He’d never even imagine it!
Except … except he must have. He’d done more than consider committing such an atrocity. And if the reasons were irrefutable, who’s to say he’d been wrong? Especially if a lord of creation commanded him. Disposing of those selected by the gods had been his purpose. He was an instrument of fate, as he’d discovered when he pulled his blade from the mausoleum of his last life. What he had become, however, with his reduced abilities and incomplete memory, was disputable. If any of his former selves felt gnawing remorse over the vision of Madri, he doubted they could have long claimed the title Sword of the Gods.
The cold rain still streamed down. Rain dripped under his boot cuffs and pooled around his toes. Whatever else, he thought, I’m not the person who did that! That person … shared my name, that’s all. If I believe otherwise, I’m only a stumble away from the sanatorium. It’s time to stop rooting for memories. It can’t be worth this.
Except that was a lie. Necessity required he continue striving to remember his previous lives. Learning all he’d once been, and everything he’d once done, was the only way to protect himself from a potential cavalcade of enemies he didn’t even remember making. Enemies his previous selves had made, he corrected himself. That distinction mattered, if only to him. Unfortunately, the events of a few months ago had revealed that his enemies would continue to pursue him, life after life, incarnation after incarnation.
They weren’t after his life; they were after his soul.
He stared up into the rain, as bleakness settled over him. Even if he jumped and smashed himself along the cliffside city below, it would be no escape. I’ll just reform into a new mortal shell somewhere in a few years and lose all the progress I’ve gained this time around. Which was maybe what his worst enemy—his nemesis—intended. The Madri recollection might be the very thing Kalkan had manipulated him into recalling, thanks to the rakshasa’s unholy knowledge of the future. The rakshasa, though dead, had proved to be the ultimate puppeteer. Perhaps Kalkan foresaw he’d kill himself in a fit of despair and so seal the fate of Demascus’s next incarnation. Kalkan wanted to turn Demascus into an unforgiving fiend exactly like himself. Why? But Kalkan would be out of the picture for a few more years, until the rakshasa returned to renew his blasted purpose …
Demascus glanced once more into the night, then stepped back from the edge. He gasped, after releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His hands trembled as he recalled the touch of the woman’s shoulders and the trust in her tumultuous eyes. Madri … Who were you? Is this awful vision all I will ever know about you? Probably. You’re long dead, and have been for who knows how many years …
I need to leave Airspur. Maybe find someplace in Faerûn where none of my previous selves ever visited. Throw away the Veil, the sword, and start over completely—
Something dropped from the storm, tumbling out of control. It smashed right through the skylight he’d spent a small fortune installing. As the bark of shattering glass cut the air, he realized the shape had worn a black leather mask. It was Riltana!
Five figures arrowed down from the night, hot on the windsoul’s trail. Four crashed through the shattered skylight, amid falling pieces of glass, rain, and his friend, landing in the living room. The fifth landed on the rooftop as easily as Riltana normally would, no worse for wear from a plunge off some higher city cliff or mote. The figure was gaunt, with colorless eyes. He gripped a black blade and wore gray leather without insignia or decoration.
“Who the Hells are you?” said Demascus.
“Your end.”
THE CITY OF AIRSPUR, AKANÛL
16 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
TTHE GAUNT MAN ADVANCED ACROSS DEMASCUS’S ROOF.
Demascus sighed in relief. Sometimes fate was kind. He couldn’t have asked for a more perfect distraction from the maelstrom battering his mind.
He relinquished confusion and regret; he wasn’t even sure what he should feel guilty about. It was easier to let go. A familiar spike of joy in the face of drawn weapons shattered his doubt. This newcomer was about to discover the only ending on this night would be his.
The world slowed, making it seem like each raindrop was a distinct globule suspended in air. Even as Demascus’s adversary tensed to attack, he seemed to freeze in place. The deva’s hands itched for Exorcessum, but he’d had no reason to bring his blade to the roof. It was locked in a trunk under his cot. He really should keep his sword clos
er, especially after all the trouble he’d gone through to find it. But the weapon was so unwieldy. Even sheathing it on his back was awkward. How had his previous selves managed it? No matter. His current weapons included his Veil, which seemed to function only about half the time; and the single scroll-shaped charm woven into his hair—useful in conversations where lies were flying like crows—but not so much against swordplay.
And by the way the newcomer’s tar-colored blade seemed to eat light, the weapon was enchanted with some kind of nasty surprise. Demascus swiveled side-wise toward his foe to bring one of his favorite weapons into play. His heel lashed, once into the man’s stomach, a second time into his neck, and finally where the stranger’s fingers wrapped around the hilt of his blade. It was like kicking a bag filled with sodden earth, not flesh. But the sword came free. Demascus snatched it out of the air even as his foe’s eyes dilated with pain. Or maybe just surprise. It didn’t matter; Riltana was squaring off against four foes by herself in his living room.
A row of ghostly runes faded onto his borrowed blade in pale imitation of Exorcessum’s designs. He hewed the intruder with the man’s own sword, and the man dropped like a limp rag from the force of the blow, though no blood came. Demascus dismissed the attacker and gazed into the gaping hole in his skylight. A jagged shadow thrown up from a glass splinter offered a convenient path, so he stepped into its embrace. His next step was out of a different shadow, this one thrown by an overturned divan one level down.
Riltana was on her feet. Four adversaries ringed her, menacing the genasi with black iron weapons. One intruder was huge, another tiny, the third dressed all in yellow, and the last was a woman with painted red fingernails as long as daggers … they all had the same feral, hungry look and colorless eyes with only tiny black circles to mark their irises. When the one in yellow screamed and leaped at Riltana, Demascus saw long incisors in her mouth. Vampires? He swallowed. He hoped not. He’d faced vampires before. At least, a previous version of himself had. Probably. Uncertainty made him hesitate.
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